-1

I upgraded an old laptop running Windows 7 to Windows 10 back when Microsoft was giving them away.

Since then, the entire OS just....well....died on me. I tried doing the automatic recovery by booting into safemode. That froze up half way and after that I couldn't even get to safemode anymore and a regular boot would just power down my laptop.

Without any media for Windows 10, I used the recovery partition. Now I'm back to factory specs (Windows 7). Is there any way to get the Windows 10 that I had before installed again? IE - without paying for it.

user697206
  • 1
  • Once you did the upgrade, Microsoft should have it in their database, that you upgraded the machine. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10/reinstalling-windows-10-after-upgrade/578d0b7f-57e4-4893-b9d1-6cfac0d6290a – Musselman Feb 14 '17 at 02:18
  • Download the ISO from Microsoft, create a bootable USB drive and do a clean install of Windows 10. As long is it was properly activated online and you have not modified the hardware, the new install should activate properly on the same exact machine that was registered before. – acejavelin Feb 14 '17 at 02:21
  • Please see the previous question referenced above. The bottom line is that your Windows 10 system will activate automatically, whether you do a reset or a clean install. – Run5k Feb 14 '17 at 02:25
  • get the Win10 ISO (http://superuser.com/a/1108086/174557) and upgrade. Windows will detect that it was already used on the hardware and activates Windows 10. – magicandre1981 Feb 14 '17 at 05:21

1 Answers1

0

Download the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft. http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=691209

It's a simple Wizard that lets you create an installer flash drive or install windows on the computer on which it's running without need for optical disk or flash drive.

Now that you already had Windows 10 on your computer once it will activate again without issue, pretty sure it's linked to your motherboard serial number.

Nicholas H
  • 1